A sea ice model was developed by converting the Community Ice Code (CICE) into an unstructured-grid, finite-volume version (named UG-CICE). The governing equations were discretized with flux forms over control volumes in the computational domain configured with nonoverlapped triangular meshes in the horizontal and solved using a second-order accurate finite-volume solver. Implementing UG-CICE into the Arctic Ocean finite-volume community ocean model provides a new unstructured-grid, MPI-parallelized model system to resolve the ice-ocean interaction dynamics that frequently occur over complex irregular coastal geometries and steep bottom slopes. UG-CICE was first validated for three benchmark test problems to ensure its capability of repeating the ice dynamics features found in CICE and then for sea ice simulation in the Arctic Ocean under climatologic forcing conditions. The model-data comparison results demonstrate that UG-CICE is robust enough to simulate the seasonal variability of the sea ice concentration, ice coverage, and ice drifting in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent coastal regions.

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dc.description.sponsorship

This work was supported by the NSF Arctic
Program for projects with grant numbers of ARC0712903, ARC0732084,
and ARC0804029. The Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project
(AOMIP) has provided an important guidance for model improvements
and ocean studies under coordinated experiments activities. We would like
to thank AOMIP PI Proshutinsky for his valuable suggestions and comments
on the ice dynamics. His contribution is supported by ARC0800400 and
ARC0712848. The development of FVCOM was supported by the Massachusetts
Marine Fisheries Institute NOAA grants DOC/NOAA/
NA04NMF4720332 and DOC/NOAA/NA05NMF4721131; the NSF Ocean
Science Program for projects of OCE‐0234545, OCE‐0227679, OCE‐
0606928, OCE‐0712903, OCE‐0726851, and OCE‐0814505; MIT Sea
Grant funds (2006‐RC‐103 and 2010‐R/RC‐116); and NOAA NERACOOS
Program for the UMASS team. G. Gao was also supported by the
Chinese NSF Arctic Ocean grant under contract 40476007. C. Chen’s contribution
was also supported by Shanghai Ocean University International
Cooperation Program (A‐2302‐10‐0003), the Program of Science and
Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (09320503700), the
Leading Academic Discipline Project of Shanghai Municipal Education
Commission (J50702), and Zhi jiang Scholar and 111 project funds of the
State Key Laboratory for Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China
Normal University (ECNU).